2014 Playboy Playmate of the Year Receives Roadster as Prize

They say it’s an honor just to be nominated, but apparently if you make Playmate of the Year for Playboy magazine, you also get a car. This year Kennedy Summers takes that honor and according to Jalopnik, also takes home a 2014 MINI Roadster JCW.

I have to say, I did a bit of a double-take when I saw the car. It sure does look an awful lot like our most recent long-term test car. The Jalopnik piece says it’s a 2014 MINI, so seems unlikely they’ve just bought her a used MINI:

In addition to $100,000 in prize money and an Oris Artelier Date Diamonds watch with 72 diamonds, 2014 Playboy Playmate of the Year Kennedy Summers also won a 2014 Mini John Cooper Works Roadster. She looks overjoyed.

The magazine announced Thursday that 27-year-old Summers will look, um, overjoyed in the June issue that goes on sale next Friday, which will also honor the 60 years Playboy has been around.

Commentary on Playboy aside, it’s interesting the relationship that items like MINIs, Vespas and other niche brands have to contests and prizes. Does giving a MINI to a Playboy Bunny make it more desirable or less? I guess that depends on how you feel about Playboy. But beyond that, even if it were The Economist giving a MINI away, I’m on the fence about how that reflects on the MINI brand. It’s a strange dichotomy where the object in question is both “desirable” enough to be an enviable prize, but is it also disposable in some sense to just be given away?

What do you think? Does giving a MINI away help or hurt the MINI brand?

Casting my mind back to the R50 launch and the following 8 years during which I worked in the UK dealer network, we were STRONGLY advised against offering cars cars prizes for anything, or supplying one if we knew that it was to be used as such. It was very much “the car’s the star”, and there was simply no need to cheapen the brand by giving them away, whatever the context. Of course it still happened, and but MINI UK didn’t like it…
Of course that was then – when our average discount per unit was less than £30 – and it’s a different market today, but I’m sure MINI worldwide is still very protective over it’s baby, and very careful about which other brands it associates with… so I’d hazard that Playboy isn’t on the list and that this is not a MINI NA endorsed give-away!

We just prepped a factory F56 Cooper S for display at the Playboy Mansion. MINI has been in cahoots for a while now!

JamesN

In the UK McDonalds hold a monopoly “treasure hunt” every year where you have the chance to win 1 of 20 Mini’s if you go to the restaurants so much you collect all the tickets; the irony there being that you probably wouldn’t fit in it if you’ve been going to McDonalds solid for 2 months to win it. They are usually Mini Hatches, but this year they’re all Cabrios, and base model One’s at that. Now, correct me if I’m wrong but if MINI UK were all aboard with this, you’d have thought they would have taken the opportunity to show off the F56 by giving them away, even if they’re just the One? So are they giving away ex-dealer Cabrios because they’re cheaper and McDonalds can’t afford to give away all new cars because Mini ain’t partnering with them? Or are they just giving convertibles away so fat people have at least a slither of a hope of fitting in them?

CloroxPlz

Hope they included a set of sanitizing wipes for the seats. You only can imagine what fluids will be all over those seats.

supermonkee

She’s not the first PMOY to choose a MINI. I believe Sara Jean Underwood did so as well.